Wednesday, April 3, 2013

FW Weekly's Liquid Power Got Me Thinking About The Tarrant Regional Water District Scandals

I am such a big fan of Texas politics, Texas elections and just about all things Texan.

On May 11 some voters who live in the Tarrant Regional Water District will be allowed to vote for TRWD board members.

The Tarrant Regional Water District, and this upcoming election, are classic examples of the Texas type things I find so interesting.

By interesting I mean bizarre and just plain wrong.

For example, only people who live in certain areas of the TRWD are allowed to vote.

If you live in Haltom City, with that town greatly effected by TRWD actions and in-actions, well you don't get to vote, even though things like flash floods flood through your town, killing people.

This week's FW Weekly has an article about this upcoming election, titled Liquid Power. The article is illustrated with a photo of Layla Caraway standing in front of a TRWD sign, with the caption saying, "Water activist Layla Caraway is among those wanting new leadership on the Tarrant Regional Water District board."

However, Layla Caraway lives in Haltom City, so this water activist will not be allowed to vote in this election.

It is very difficult to un-elect a TRWD board member. The process is sort of stacked in their favor, even to the point of arbitrarily adding a year to their 4 year terms. Imagine the uproar that would rear up if Barack Obama did that. But, in Texas, nary a peep.

The TRWD is being sued, currently, for being in violation, over and over and over again, of the Texas Open Meetings Act. This part of the TRWD scandals is also covered in the FW Weekly article.

The three people who hope to get elected to the TRWD are John Basham, Mary Kelleher, and Timothy Nold.

One paragraph in the FW Weekly article stood out to me....

The three like-minded challengers are not running on an anti-TRV message. That project is inevitable. The challengers characterize themselves as watchdogs ready to provide more transparency and steer the water district back to its original mission.

The TRV is inevitable?

For those reading this who are don't know what "TRV" in the above paragraph refers to, TRV is the Trinity River Vision. That being this really bizarre public works project the public has never voted on, a bizarre project which will remove flood control levees, which have worked well for over a half a century, replacing the levees with a humongous flood diversion channel, plus an ever shrinking lake, along with a wakeboard pond, drive-in movie theater, restaurants and other nonsensical things thrown in, all of which cause me to refer to the TRV as the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle.

Oh, and Fort Worth Congresswoman Kay Granger's unqualified for the job, son, J.D., was given the job of running the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle, which I suspect may be part of the reason the Vision has seen such bizarre things as the Cowtown Wakepark and the Woodshed Smokehouse. And that aforementioned, soon to open, drive-in movie theater.

The FW Weekly article mentions a San Antonio-like Riverwalk as part of the TRV Boondoggle. I may be wrong, but I think the Riverwalk left the Vision some time ago, along with those really cool signature bridges across the un-needed flood diversion channel, which will now be crossed by 3 not so cool, non-signature bridges.

I have been told that the 3 TRWD challengers are not running on an anti-TRV platform because most of the voters don't know what TRV is, and polls show that most of the voters, who do know what TRV is, think it is a super wonderful thing that will make the rest of the world even more Green With Envy when people think of one of the Greatest Cities in the World, that being Fort Worth.

Well, methinks perhaps, if the majority of the locals are ignorant regarding Fort Worth's latest, and likely, Greatest boondoggle, that being the Trinity River Vision, with its big price tag, with the money actually being spent on a dubious economic development project, propaganda-ized as being a much needed flood control project, well, educating voters regarding the idea that it might be in their interest to un-elect the buffoons who initiated the un-voted for Trinity River Vision Boondoggle, might be a way to motivate voters to go to the effort to vote the scoundrels out.

But, what do I know? I'm just a cranky person who knows GOOFY when I see it.....